Locally, the Freestore Foodbank fills that role, and it kicked off the Navigator program today at the Community Action Agency in Bond Hill.

Ana Cohen sat down to check out her options for health insurance through the marketplace on the website.

She said the site wasn’t very difficult to navigate, even if it did take about an hour to get through it all.

“Some of the questions you do have to pay attention and read carefully,” Cohen cautioned.

Cohen says she has a health care plan offered through her work with a $5,000 deductible and premiums of $25 every two weeks.

Through the new marketplace she was able to shop for a plans that were more competitively priced. “Deductibles of like $500 or less and the premiums are like $30 to maybe $70 a month,” Cohen said.

Part of the goal of the outreach work is to get people to opt-in to the health care system, said Trey Daly with the non-partisan non-profit group Enroll America.

“If we have a system that’s just made up of older, sicker folks who are using a lot of care, that’s a system that’s not going to be viable, we need everybody to have skin in the game, to be contributing to the system, so that the system is there to help folks whenever any one of us is in need,” Daly said.

There were only a handful of people who came out to the event to sign up for the new healthcare exchanges. And there were a few glitches with the healthcare website, but the counselors helping people sign up were able to get through them.

As for Cohen, she was able to get to the point where she’s ready to pick a plan, once she makes a final decision.

“I’m definitely going to switch,” Cohen said.

The Freestore Foodbank will be working to hold more events like this in the coming weeks to help people sign up.